Everything in it's Right Place
by Jayni
Summary: Wash and River have a hearttoheart. Pre BDM


The day started as though something were out of place. Wash couldn't finger why, but it was something.

Maybe it was that Shepherd wasn't back yet on board from his little Bathgate retreat-thing. Or that Inara had shut herself in her shuttle and gotten awful quiet after an awful loud run-in with the captain. Not soon thereafter, Mal rushed out for less than legal activities with Jayne as backup, leaving Zoe on-board and in charge.

Wash didn't mind the least of all; so long Mal and Jayne were off doing the dirty work, left him and Zoe to do the dirty.

With the afterglow grin plastered on his face, something still felt out of ease. Shouldn't be though; blessed with the beautifullest deadliest woman in the 'verse. Even if she occasionally made him feel a mite short, in bed, she made him feel mighty long.

The grin was still there as he stepped towards the main decks, but instead of following his stomach, he was turning his heel towards the cockpit. He knew why, too. When he wasn't beside his wife, his lovely _lovely_ wife-- this cockpit, this chair-- this was his place on Serenity.

However, there was an odd shadow was cast over his sanctum. A little girl-shaped shadow, the source of which was a little girl-shaped-- well, girl laying on Serenity's pilot-side windshield.

In all his mighty longness, Wash managed a dignified, "Huh."

He looked around, as though someone was going to pop out with a capture or like his eyes would open and he'd actually be in his bed covered in the sweat and love of his lovely Lamby-Toes. Instead, he ended up chasing his tail three-sixty, finding himself back to staring again at the girl lying out on the windshield.

There were whispers, and not-so-quiet noises, made about how River wasn't quite right. They were the kind of sounds like questions of whys and how longs this risk was going to last. But Wash wasn't like Mal or Jayne, or even Zoe when it came to this particular case -- he knew the risk, he wasn't stupid, but River was still just a girl. She was a girl without a place, but a girl all the same.

Her brother brought her on, in a crate no less, and she found herself on Serenity. Much in the way most of them just found themselves here, till they each made their place.

Mal was the captain with Zoe as his second, regardless of the contention that caused. Jayne was a big hunk of muscle, which occasionally flexed a space for a brain to work out a word of truth or two. Kaylee was the heart and tender, with an ear for all Serenity's little workings. Inara gave them some credibility, which they could always use as much of, considering. Shepherd brought another note of credit, even with his interpretations of scripture in regards to kneecaps.

Her brother, the much needed doctor, had brought her aboard; now, his crazy sister was just, well, here. On Serenity. Elsewhere, folk had a place inside her, 'cept little River.

Seemed to Wash, though, that she'd decided on her place - or at least, _a_ place - and at present, it wasn't one he was all that comfortable with. They were in-world, so it wasn't entirely unsafe for her to be out there, though it wasn't exactly an ideal place to be taking a nap.

He wondered if he should get on the comm. Call for Simon, or well, someone. Didn't want to wake his wife, who he had spent the better part of the last while tiring out in the first place.

And if River was right there in front of him, meant Simon wasn't as occupied as he might usually be, meaning Kaylee was perhaps somewhere taking advantage.

The way River just lay there, she didn't seem ready to pitch a fit. And he knew Simon would come with the needles, and well, Wash didn't like needles any more than he imagined River did, and he saw them a whole lot less. So he, being a man of the foolhardy persuasion, volunteered himself to go fetch the little crazy one down.

However, the foolhardy caught up with him, once he found himself scaling the outside of Serenity. It wasn't as though he didn't know his way around the ship, inside and out; but in all honesty, he wasn't quite as intimate with it as Kaylee, or as River was now seeming to be. He made his way out to her, not quite making it all the way to the slope of the windshield, just sitting atop the bulkhead, trying to look casual and comfortable.

"So! New hobby?"

River didn't answer at first, at least not verbally. Her hands reached for the sky as if her fingertips could trace the clouds.

"Think you might need to grow a bit more before you'll reach." He shifted, the metal plating of Serenity's exterior none-too forgiving on his rear. Not especially cool either, even with the cloud cover.

"They're water. Condensed. Suspended."

Wash glanced up at the sky. "Clouds, you mean?" As he continued to look up, a cloud was swept by a gust of wind, and the sun was right in his eye. He brought his hand up to shade it, tipping in a dangerous manner, but a weight settled by his side. He glanced down to see River fisting his sleeve. He cleared his throat, "Might wanna hold tight there, might get me in all sorts of trouble with the doctor if you were to go tumbling off the edge there."

River gave him a look, and he suddenly felt great sympathy for Simon.

"They're water. Like a river."

The great sympathy blinked into something greater and his gaze softened on River's face.

There was a strength there he could see; he hadn't really seen the girl as a woman, but at the moment he couldn't help but compare. All women were on a scale of one to Zoe in his head; and the resemblance was all colours uncanny.

Maybe coming out here, being with River, unscrewed something in his head, because she was looking an awful lot like Zoe, only turned inside out: all the strength under the surface, and all the soft broken bits out and exposed.

"They'll clear soon." He heard himself say.

His arm looped over the small girl's shoulders, and she was liquid the way she leant to him. He wondered back to the woman in his bed, the one he knew was all colours sweet and was all kinds of soft passions reserved all for him; the one he knew had seen more pain and bloodshed than he had ever, and as he looked at River he saw it all. Out in the open, in a tiny quivering frame.

It made him forget that this girl was like Zoe, too, had a similar aptitude with knives and guns alike; forget enough that he hugged her to his side.

"Condensed -- Suspended --"

She was making sense to him, and it was a worry.

Zoe was better with the whole sentencing-properly thing than River, but it wasn't too different now. When Zoe told the stories, the war stories, they were memories of carnage and confusion, told like anecdotes, asides, and by-the-ways, but Wash heard them as statements. Clear and true statements of fact.

It's why he couldn't hear them, couldn't stand to. He heard them and he saw the fact of it, the war, and saw his Zoe, his angel, there in the thick of it; and couldn't think he should've been there. He didn't know her then, but he should've been there.

But he was here now, for what it was worth.

And this was River, not Zoe, but he was here now.

"The wind will change. And it'll clear." Her arm was cold under his hand, and he wondered how long she'd been out here. His free caressed the warmed outer hull of Serenity. "And if they don't, we'll soar right on by them."

"Like a leaf on the wind."

"Like a leaf on the wind," he echoed. He tilted his head up, watching that same cloud inch across the sky. "I think I like the sound of that." When River looked up at him, his smile was reflected in her eyes. "C'mon back inside. If you're good, I might even give you a little flying lesson."

River's eyes fogged, and there was a tug at his chest. He didn't want to see her tears. No more than he wanted to see Zoe's. Or Kaylee's, or Inara's. Or anyone of the crew.

Proposing to Zoe was the only thing he was sure of more than this; River was right where she was supposed to be, whispers or no. She'd find her place here in Serenity, grow into it just as they each had. Because under all that crazy, she was still just a girl.

Under all the crazy, they were all just people.

And this was their place.


End file.
